She began drawing at 10, often sketching angels with big eyes and floppy wings. The extraordinary story of Keane, who became a Jehovahs Witness and in recent years continued to paint and sell her work at auctions and at her Keane Eyes Gallery in San Francisco, has been retold in books, magazines and on the internet in a resurgence of interest sparked by the Tim Burton film ∻ig Eyes, released in 2014, with Amy Adams as Keane and Christoph Waltz as her husband.įrom childhood, when a mastoid operation resulted in permanent eardrum damage and hearing loss, she had been fascinated with eyes, watching for cues to amplify what was being said. (In Woody Allens 1973 science fiction spoof Sleeper, the smart set in the year 2173 uses the single word Keane to refer to great art.) Her surname was revered by fans but cut to a punch line by satirists. Her work was in museums, galleries and millions of homes. Keane, a reticent woman, had a talent that appealed to the masses but not to art lovers or critics. They were everywhere stacked at sidewalk art shows, found in discount stores alongside velvet Elvis and clown pictures, staring out from souvenir stands the eyes following you like a conscience. To generations of Americans with even a passing acquaintance with contemporary art, the Keane name raised images of sad children trapped in dystopian worlds of deprivation and misery. Her daughter, Jane Swigert, said the cause was heart failure. Margaret Keane, the artist whose doleful, saucer-eyed waifs earned millions in an international kitsch craze a half-century ago, and who inspired an epic art fraud by a husband whose claims to have executed her work were demolished in a paint-off in court, died Sunday at her home in Napa, California.